Tapestry
by nancystagerat
Summary: After the battle in the Department of Mysteries, the Black tapestry raises questions about her family Tonks would rather have never asked. Tonks' POV. PostOotP.


"Tapestry"

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"You've taken to spending a lot of time in here recently."

My eyes darted up, startled by the voice; the first human contact I'd had all day. Remus closed the door behind him, careful not to let a certain eavesdropping house-elf scurry in after. We could hear Kreacher throwing a bit of a hissy fit in the hallway, panicking, the batty little cretin; something along the lines of "—filthy mudblood and the werewolf, Kreacher must not let them hurt mistress's tapestry! Kreacher must do something!" He was easily ignored.

"Oh?" I replied, rather stupidly. "Yes, I suppose I have." I didn't feel the smile I offered him reach my eyes, and rather than seem artificial I let it fade and turned my face away, going back to fingering the heavy weave.

"You haven't been yourself, either." He moved to stand next to me, eyes flicking away from my hair to fix themselves where I was staring at nothing. I knew he was right. I'd always been a people person, and in the past week or so I'd been conspicuously silent around the rest of the Order, quite brainless of me when I wanted them to think Sirius' recent death was the only thing on my mind. If it was, they knew I'd be doing my grieving with the rest of them, seeking out company rather than shunning it. I should've known _someone_ would think something was up. Not to mention the fact that I'd let my hair fade to a rather unattractive shade of dusky, dusty brown. My brain had been kicking me for that one; in light of recent events, I'd had neither the motivation nor the gall to maintain my normal favored pink. I knew, as did everyone else, that my cousin and what he'd sacrificed deserved more than just passing consideration. He deserved to be mourned for the determined, reckless, devious, hilarious, stunningly courageous man he was, and my hair had been the most fitting tribute I thought I could give him. But it almost made it look like I was begging for attention. All I wanted was to be left alone.

He continued. "Molly and the rest are worried. She asked if I'd check on you." I heaved an inward sigh; leave it to a mother of seven to read me like a book. That woman, lovely though she may be, has had way too many people to practice on.

"I'm fine, Remus, really." The look he gave me at that was skeptical, and he heaved such a sigh you would think he'd collapsed his lungs by the end of it. I turned my gaze to his face, watched him shake his head at me, but the voice that answered held no disapproval, warm with concern.

"If you can't convince yourself, how can you expect to convince anyone else?"

I said nothing.

"Molly thinks you're blaming yourself for his death," he continued, turning back to the tapestry. "She's practically beside herself worrying about you."

"She shouldn't be." I raised my fingers to the Black family tree, Mum's family tree, tracing one of the branches. "I've just been…thinking. About things."

He said nothing for a moment. "Tonks, it's not like you to be so quiet. She's afraid it could be dangerous to leave you alone for—"

My reply came out sharper than I'd intended. "I'm not about to do anything to hurt myself, if that's what she's fretting over."

"I believe," he said after a pause, his voice falling in a slow rumble around me, a lovely, coarse sort of sound, "it's your unwillingness to share with the class that's got her worked up."

I didn't answer, unsure of what to make of that. It didn't feel right to me to spill all my worries to everyone. Some things were just better kept to oneself, and the last thing everyone else needed right now was to hear all my silly insecurities. Silence spread thick and sticky like honey through the room, and I resumed trailing down one of the tapestry's branches. I couldn't stand there next to him like that, not without someone else near. I couldn't trust myself not to screw things up. I…I wanted Remus there, no matter how I told myself I'd rather be alone.

My eyes searched for Sirius' blacked-out name. He would watch us for me. He would understand.

"Tonks," Remus tried again, after a long pause, "if it's not too forward of me, may I ask what it is you've been pondering for so long?"

I found the burn mark where Sirius's name would've been. "My cousin. The tapestry. The Order. Everything." He waited for me to continue; I should've known he'd be the last person to take it and leave it at that. Now it was my turn to sigh out all the air in my body. "It's just…looking at this…"

The entire history of the Black family stretched in front of me, I couldn't help but note the number of charred blotches breaking up the weave. _So many of them_, I'd thought, _so many erased_. I'd found Mum's burn a long time ago, had sought it out the first time I'd laid eyes on the tapestry. To tell the truth, though I wasn't surprised to see her name erased and not to see my own, I hadn't been expecting the letdown. These people were my family, and though I held no love for them, I couldn't keep the cold ball from settling like lead in my stomach.

_You are unwanted_. _You should never have been born._

It was a blow to the mind, regardless of whether or not I'd expected to see Mum and myself among them. It's just…they'd rather I never existed at all, just because Mum fell in love with Dad, just because Dad is a half-blood. To be reviled by your family just for being alive. They'd rather wipe us all away than accept a muggle-born as one of them, like they did to my parents. Like they did to Sirius for befriending people like me.

"…It makes me feel like a little kid, like I don't understand myself anymore." I paused, still fingering the tapestry, thinking again. "Maybe like I never understood me to begin with."

Remus refused to let it go. "Oh?" he asked, and something about his voice, something about the way he looked at me, something told me yes, it was okay, and he would listen. I don't know how, but some little voice at the back of my mind told me that he'd understand.

"As a kid I used to wonder why only Dad's side of the family ever came to see me on my birthdays." I said, a little ashamed when he met my words with a wry smile. (_Merlin,_ _why was he so damned easy to talk to?)_ Rather than watch his face, I searched out my mother's burn mark again, nestled between the names Bellatrix and Narcissa. The aunts with no desire to ever see their half-blood niece. "How come I'd never met my other grandma and grandpa, my other aunts and uncles and cousins?" I shook my head, embarrassed for my younger self. I'd always had parents who loved me, always had friends at school (though I was never what you'd call popular), always fit well with the people I worked with, always felt like I'd reasonably belonged. But still. They were my family, and I wanted to see them just like any other little girl would. "Whenever I asked, Mum would only give me this sad smile and say they were too far away to come visit, but if they ever knew me they'd love me all the same."

_If they ever knew me_. A sharp little laugh left my throat. "I don't think she anticipated that they'd try to kill me on sight." A wave of cold broke over my head as I remembered the Department of Mysteries, dueling with Bellatrix. Her taunts echoed in the shiver running down my spine.

"She was calling at me between spells, things like 'So this is my ickle widdle mudblood niece, is it?' and 'If I'd known my idiot sister spawned such a disaster I'd have put you out of your misery twenty years ago.' I never answered her, just kept throwing my own spells, but I guess she was having too much fun trying to get to me. 'You are nothing, you stupid little girl, a disgusting accident that shouldn't have been born.' Gods, Remus," I said, forcing my hands to unclench themselves, surprised at the jagged sound coming from my mouth. "I let her get under my skin. If I hadn't done that—"

If my face hadn't fallen open then, if the cruel words hadn't made me drop my guard. "If I hadn't been such a sodding great baby—" My throat caught, and the hands I'd just unclenched tightened back into fists. "If I hadn't remembered asking mum why the bloody woman never came to see her niece—"

It would've taken more self control than I'd had just then to keep one of those fists from slamming into the wall. Remus started back a bit, but recovered fast enough to catch the hand I'd abused before I could cradle it to my chest. I was almost too worked up at that point to notice. "I could've held her off. I could've beaten her. She'd never…He wouldn't…" It ached to think about. My eyes found Sirius' blacked out name again and blinked back the heat filming them over.

Remus didn't need to hear any more. "You _are_ blaming yourself, aren't you." It was more of a statement than a question, his weary voice heavy with sympathy as his wand checked my bruising knuckles for breaks.

"How could I not?" I near shouted, yanking my hand away from him, and something inside me was appalled by the note of hysteria that had crept around the edges of the words. "The woman is _evil_! Bellatrix was never any family of mine, blood aunt or not, and I should hate her with every breath in my body! Merlin, I thought I _did_ hate her! But when she spoke to me all of a sudden I felt like that stupid, stupid little girl still wishing for the aunt that never came to her birthdays!"

"Tonks…" Remus began, but I wasn't finished yet. I hadn't even registered he'd spoken.

"I don't understand! How can I still _want_ that after everything she's done?! She'd rather have me dead than ever look at me like family! I am nothing to these people, I've never loved them, so why in Merlin's name does it _hurt_ like this?" The words came out harsh, almost accusing to the one man who'd bothered to ask what's been eating me. _The one man you've wished would show concern for you_, my mind whispered, but I pushed the thought away; now was not the time. Now I wanted to hit things, to vent the frustration on anything but myself, but I turned the lash inward anyway, all shame at my hysteria forgotten. Remus was the last person I could ever take anything out on.

I looked up at him, my breath coming in heavier gasps, my wild eyes searching for the slightest hint of answer in his own. "What kind of twisted person must I be, to feel loss when I've known they'd never accept me in the first place? Gods, she killed my cousin and laughed! She would've killed me, too, if Sirius hadn't been a bigger threat to her!" The tears were coming now, but I was too wound up to notice the hot streaks running down my face. "Why do I still want to belong to these people who think nothing of killing their own? Why the hell can't I just hate them and leave it at that?!"

I didn't see him move, but all of a sudden I felt him there, arms closing around me, hands running in long strokes down my shaking back. Stunned, all I could do was stand there, hands against his chest, crying into his pullover, listening to him murmur into my hair. It felt like I'd been folded into his heartbeat—or maybe it was just my own pounding away in my ears. I was too much of a mess then to tell.

"Oh, 'Dora…" It was strange that the name sent a hot shiver down my spine; he'd used the nickname my parents called me. "It's not that simple."

Remus was patient with me, waiting to speak until I'd calmed enough to hear him. I concentrated on the things he said, quite a feat when his touch and the warmth in his voice screamed for my undivided attention. "You can't hate them because you will never be like them. You grew up with none of the prejudice that lets them hurt and humiliate and kill in cold blood." He held my head to his chest, threading long, soothing fingers through my hair. "You're able to love in a way they'll never know, and that keeps you from hating anyone like they do."

I let that sink in for a few long moments. By that time I was getting drowsy from my crying and the feel of his hands in my hair, not to mention my own hand was still throbbing. Gods, I hadn't cried like that since I was eleven, not since the day Mum and Dad saw me off to school for the first time (yes, I'd been a baby as a first-year). I'd probably soaked through his sweater, but Remus didn't seem to care. My forehead rested against his collarbone, pressed to the soft gray fabric, and it all felt so impossible it took another long minute before I got up the courage to speak again; I was too afraid I'd shatter the moment that seemed more illusion than life.

"How many more, Remus?" I asked, closing my eyes against the Black family tree spread like a disease around us. The number of burns in the tapestry was enough to make my eyes spin, but what was even more startling was the number of names that remained. For every blacked out name, there were at least four still staring proudly from their places, if not more, displaying the pure-blood mania that had branded an entire half of my family as enemies. Those names remained a testament to the hate this place had witnessed through the years.

"Sirius was just the first. How many more will we lose to these people before this thing is through?"

"I…" he began, and I could feel him wither against me as he steeled himself to answer. "Probably too many."

"Do any of us even stand a chance?" I whispered, as if even to keep it from the tapestry-lined walls; that kind of doubt wasn't to be voiced aloud.

"Tonks—"

Before he could get any further the creak of the opening door made us jump six feet in the air. We sprang apart like kids caught snogging in an empty classroom, and being the incredibly coordinated soul I was, I managed to lose my balance and crash backward to the floor, taking Remus, whose hand I'd grabbed to try and stay upright, with me.

"I—blimey, Lupin, are you alright?" said none other than Fred Weasley, the culprit who'd scared me half to death. He shot a sly grin in my direction before turning on Remus. "Geez, Professor, you let her drag you down, too? You know Tonks is klutzier when she's sober than Mundungus when he's drunk!"

Fred shut up when I threatened to hex his knees on backward. "Alright, alright, truce!" he said, raising his hands in surrender. "Mum just sent me to tell you dinner's ready! Oh, and she said she's going to drag you downstairs and force-feed you if you won't eat with us this time, Tonks, don't think she won't." He ducked out the door before I got the chance to make good on my threat.

As soon as Fred left, Remus and I gave each other one of the most absurd looks I think I've ever seen in my life, and burst into a round of sheepish laughter. "I'm sorry," I said, consciously forcing the blush down from my neck (_Merlin, I can't even _remember_ the last time I blushed like that!_), for once truly thankful for the ability to control my appearance. "First I pour out all these worries you never needed to hear, then I wipe my dripping eyes all over your sweater, and now it look like I'm trying to break you in half on top of it! I swear, Remus, I won't do that to you again—"

"No, Tonks, it's quite alright," he said, rubbing a hand over the back of his neck, face turned pointedly away. "If you need me, I'll be there to listen." He reached out a hand to help me up, and I took it, this time a milder, almost pleasant flush rising under my skin.

"Shall we go eat?" I asked, once I was back on my feet. "I think if I stay here much longer Molly'll show up wielding utensils at me."

Remus just laughed. "You might want to change your hair back to pink though, or she'll be lobbing cakes at you next in hopes it'll lift your mood."

"Should I be afraid?" I asked, opening the door and beckoning for him to lead the way.

"I don't know," he smiled, and the light I saw in those brown eyes was enough to chase every doubt I'd ever had away. "You never can tell with Molly Weasley."

I think I fell in love with him that day.


End file.
